levture 9: bridging the divide

goal lecture

• build bridges between political economy and cultural studies in media and communications

• understand relation between agency and structure as well as conflict and consensus in media and communications

structuration theory (Giddens)

structure

• social systems: structure the way in which resources are produced, distributed and used in society

• structure: rules and resources

• they constrain human action, because our access to resources are conditioned by the system

• they enable our actions to produce resources (that we can use to change the system

two sides of a coin

• system provides resources for action (= enabling + constraining)

• structure looked at as organisation of access to social resources

resources

• social sciences generally distinguishes between economic, political and cultural (sub)systems and resources as main constituents of society

• access to resources is (historically)structures in certain ways → point of discussion viewpoints Marxist and non-Marxist

power

• structuration theory approaches problem agency in terms of power. Power seen as our capacity to exert influence on situations (people or things)

• non-Marxist: emphasis on human autonomy

• Marxist: access to resources always unequal. structure/power/access to resources articulated in dominance

• different approach exemplified by use different terminology:

  • economic resources - means of production

  • social resources - means of coercion

  • symbolic resources - means of persuasion

how does structuration work

• to what extend are we producing the system, or are we being shaped by it?

• relation agency-structure captured by concept of structuration: the day to day (unconscious) repetition of the acts of individual agents which reproduces the structure

• Giddens: practical consciousness → we are generally unaware of our actions and their effects, but we can become aware of them

economic structuration?

• concept of structuration (agency + structure) allows us to avoid the pitfalls of structural determinism and economic reductionism in Marxist theory

• but structuration theory doesn’t say anything about the articulation economy, politics and culture and a fortiori of the determination by the economic

• to what extent can economy be said to structure society

determination in the first instance

• materially - economy provides the material base of existence. Economic surplus needed for the development of political and cultural institutions

• ideologically - the economic organisation of society requires certain perceptions/way of thinking, which becomes dominant in society

• systematically - because our economy is our primary form of social organisation, our political and cultural institutions need to be compatible with the economic organisation

field theory (Bourdieu)

capital(s)

• Bourdieu’s field theory offers further integration of structure/agency dilemma and political econom

• notions of capital

  • economic capital

  • cultural capital

  • social capital

tension fields

• many different sorts: religion, race, gender ….

• different levels: society, organizations, family …

• simplified with two dimensions

habitus

• mental schemes that shap people’s perception and attitudes

• Bourdieu describes them as

  • structured structures: our mental structures are shaped by social structures

  • structuring structures: our mental structures structure our day-to-day-behaviour

bridging with cultural studies

• Giddens more action-theorist than Bourdieu. Habitus much structurally determined and much more deeply socially embedded than practical consciousness

• bourdieu’s notion habitus connects realm social structures with individual mental structures and in this sense provides bridge with cultural studies

schemata theory

• habitus as mental schemes

  • structureds structures

  • structuring structures

• what are schemata?

  • mental structures consisting of information categories and connections between them

  • simplified: concepts and relations between them

• resonance: highly resonating information is more likely to be recignised, assimilated and remembered than lowly resonating information

• schemata are learned, accumulate experience

• we use schemate to access new situation or predict behaviour

schematic inference

• schemata offer guidance: people routinely use schemata to fill in missing or ambiguous information

schematic projection

• schemate can be deceptive: people also project information by inference with existing mental schemata

• for example stereotypes: schemata based on incomplete information

perceptual cycle

Stuart Hall revisited

• psychological definition of cultura: culture has material existence in artefacts, in social practices and memory traces but is only effective in the mind

• what is culture? culture is outcome structuration process in which individual mental structures and symbolic structures recursively shape each other

• structuration through communications

  • institutional information and communication: highly structures

  • interpersonal information, including via electronic networks: more or less structured

  • situational information may be more random, but will still be structured

• role media? dominant media both intentionally and unintentionally contribute to reproduce a social structure articulated in dominance (hegemony)